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Sweeping changes -- at 104 years old Hazel Cheadle has seen Lockport grow up before her eyes

Sweeping changes -- at 104 years old Hazel Cheadle has seen Lockport grow up before her eyes

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Source

Box 1, Folder 12 of Bruce Cheadle Papers

Transcript

The Sun
A new light on your community
Wednesday January 2, 2002
50 cents
HOMER GLEN
LOCKPORT LEMONT
Hazel Cheadle, 104 years old, takes a break from sweeping the front porch of her Lockport home, a chore she does daily.
Sweeping changes
At 104 years old, Hazel Cheadle has seen Lockport grow up before her eyes Page 3
Around Town
The Sun/Wednesday, January 2, 2002—3
Hazel Cheadle has seen many changes during the last 104 years, including many in Lockport, a town she first moved to in 1912.
Amazing Hazel
Born in 1897, Lockport woman has stories spanning three centuries
By Susan Frick Carlman
STAFF WRITER
The trip to school was two miles, not an unusually long walk for pupils at the time. But Hazel Loomis was a lanky child, and her mother took pity on her.
“I was growing so fast, my legs ached so when I walked, that my mother said, “Well, we have an old mare you can use,” said Hazel, whose last name is now Cheadle.
An open-top buggy was set up and the trusty horse was harnessed to it so Hazel was able to make it to the one-room classroom without hindrance from her growing pains.
Life was much different in 1904, when Hazel was a girl starting school at Ganges Township Grade School in western Michigan. She’s stopped grow-ing now, for one thing, and her Cadillac remains stowed in the garage, no longer driven. At 104, Hazel has given up a few of the things she used to do. It’s part of having a life that has spanned portions of three different centuries.
But she still lives alone in her historic Lockport home. Two companions spend part of each day with her and help her look after the house, but she needs no special assistance. Her health is nearly perfect, and her appetite is robust.
“She eats anything and everything, mostly chocolate and sweets,” said her caretaker, Lois Kolmodin, who comes in at midday and stays through supper-time each evening to cook and keep things tidy. “Every meal has to have something sweet.”
As the last remaining member of the Deeming-Cheadle family, Hazel carries a cache of recollections about life in the early 1900s, including the Lockport she recalls from her days as a high school student.
“I was slated for college, and there was no accredited high school in Michi-gan,” she said.
So she moved to Lockport in 1912.
She and her aunt Ruth, who taught school in Lockport, took light-house-keeping rooms in a house on 13th Street when she began school. It wasn’t long before the regal-looking freshman caught the eye of a senior, longtime local boy Bruce Cheadle. A courtship began that connected the pair in a roller-coaster relationship for more than seven decades.
Weekend afternoons sometimes found Hazel and her beau at Dellwood Park, where there was an amusement park, or strolling along the banks of the Illinois and Michigan Canal.
“He used to come out Sunday after-noon and we’d go for a walk,” she said. “We walked (down to the canal) so many times, I ought to know how many steps it is.”
Being slated for college, she knew a separation was in the offing. Hazel headed for Michigan State University earning her degree before taking a job at a high school in Jackson, Mich., where she taught math and general sci-ence. Throughout her period out of the state, Bruce remained a loyal suitor, traveling the 200-plus miles of dirt roads in his car just to come and visit. There were too many letters to count.
“We kept the postman busy,” Hazel said. “He wrote every day, just about.” After a whole Bruce took a job at the high school in Jackson, too. He estab-lished a printing department there, fol-lowing in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, who had been in newspa-per publishing back home.
When the couple returned to Lock-port and got married in the mid-1920s, Hazel stopped working and settled into life as a wife. She recalls a “small-town” feel that distinguished the community
See Hazel, Page 5
Referendum drive has eyes on good old days at schools
By Susan Frick Carlman
STAFF WRITER
Supporters of the upcoming edu-cation fund referendum measure for Milne-Kevin Grove District 91 say they hope to return to smaller classes and protect existing pro-grams by passing the proposed property-tax increase.
The measure calls for a 69-cent in-crease in the education fund’s tax rate. Passage of increase March 19 would add a maximum of $435.80, or about $36 per month, to the prop-erty-tax bill on a home worth $200,000.
In a spring referendum, a request for a 59-cent hike in the rate was re-jected by vote of 595-661. The Dis-trict 91 board eliminated seven teaching positions as a result of the defeat.
This time the money would re-store those instructor positions, pay those instructor positions, pay for new textbooks and desks, provide additional support for pupils reading below their grade level, add a technology class and help expand existing offering in art, music, band, sports, physical education and extracurricular ac-tivities.
Reduction of class sizes would be the most striking impact of passing the tax increase, support-ers say. At Milne Grove Elemen-tary School, enrollment ranges from 30 to 35 students per class-room, compared with 17 to 23 chil-dren last year. Pupils in grade 4 through 8 at Kelvin Grove School have similar numbers per class-room. Although based on the number of students taking certain courses and the numbers of sections available, some classes for the older students have as many as 34 to 38 pupils.
The board has committed to reducing class sizes to their previous levels of no more than 30 per class at Kelvin Grove and 17 to 23 at Milne Grove.
Enrollment in the district’s two schools has been growing by 30 to 40 children each year.
“If you think about it, that is equivalent to literally adding one classroom per year,” said Adam Woodworth, marketing chairman for the referendum committee.
A series of public meetings is planned to inform district residents about the issues related to the refer-endum. Organizers expect to an-nounce dates and locations soon.
Hazel
From Page 3
in those days.
A couple of decades later they divorced, but both Cheadles wound up working during World War II at the same high school in Engle-wood, he teaching printing and she teaching home economics.
Eventually Hazel took a job with Union Machinery as a drafts-woman. Working with one of the company’s engineers, she created a parts manual that for the first time depicted all the components of the manufacturing machines the com-pany used, so new parts could be or-dered more easily when the old ones gave out. It was an extension of her gift with pen and paper, which also yielded many drawings during her younger days.
When Union officials announced the company was moving from Joli-et to Richmond, Va. Hazel had found something at which she was prov-ing quite accomplished. Suddenly it all seemed endangered/
“At that time I was scared to death they wouldn’t take me. And then the engineer came and said ‘How’d you like to move to Vir-ginia?’” she said.
She and her mother moved to-gether. But Bruce remained a pres-ence in their lives, arranging to have tow of the rail car’s windows re-moved so it would accommodate her ailing mother’s gurney. And after a decade or so went by and her mom had died, their paths crossed yet again. Hazel retired at age 65, remar-ried Bruce and returned to Lockport/
The couple were active in the community, serving on various boards and organizations. Bruce hired on as executive secretary for the Lockport Civic and Commerce Association, employing Sophie Schrumpf as an assistant.
“I was like a girl Friday – you know, go do this, do that,” said Schrumpf, 85, who remained close to Hazel after Bruce died at the end of 1990.
Ironically, it was widowhood that seemed to bring Hazel into her own. Out from behind her hus-band’s sometime-officious shadow, she began showing her spirit a great deal more, even uttering the occasional curse when the situation called for it.
“When he died, she just blos-somed,” said Schrumpf, who still stops in to visit her friend every few days.
Hazel is grateful for her compan-ions who also include Kolmodin, her caretaker since 1992, and Ray Pesavento, whom Bruce hired as a handyman back in 1954 or so. Pe-savento, a retired sheet-metal work-er, still stops by a couple of times a day to make sure the furnace is working properly and to chat with Hazel for a while.
Talking to a visitor, Hazel finds lapse in her recollections, but be-cause the stories have been told be-fore, her friends are able to fill in the gaps.
“It’s wonderful having someone tell me the story of my life,” sge teased Schrumpf.
“I worked for Cheadle for 28 years. I remember,” her friend re-minded her.
“You work for him, you don’t for-get it,” Hazel concurred.
And when Hazel expressed frus-tration at no longer being able to re-call things, her younger friend reas-sures her.
“You remember more than you think you do,” said Schrumpf, pat-ting her on the knee. “At 104 you’re doing wonderful.”
Curmudgeon or not, the late Bruce is missed. Schrumpf notes that he made many significant con-tributions to Lockport, including the expansion of computer rail ser-vice, and that his high school sweet-heart and two time bride admits to having a bit of a void in her days since his demise.
“Hazel says, ‘He died so young in life,’” she said. “We get such a charge out of that. He was 93.”
Contact staff writer Susan Frick Carlman at (815) 439-7528 or scarlman@scn1.com.
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